(This former Bush official and health industry entrepreneur sees big profits in the Affordable Care Act's incentives to introduce "efficiencies" into the delivery of medical services. If the Obama administration had only eschewed "the hundreds of billions of dollars in future subsidies to help Americans", his enthusiasm for the Act would be boundless.)
The President Wants You to Get Rich on Obamacare By Adam Davidson New York Times October 30 2013 […] When Scully finally began his speech, he noted that the prevailing narrative among Republicans — assuming that many in the room were, like him, Republican — was incorrect. “It’s not a government takeover of medicine,” he told the crowd. “It’s the privatization of health care.” In fact, Obamacare, he said, was largely based on past Republican initiatives. “If you took George H. W. Bush’s health plan and removed the label, you’d think it was Obamacare.” Scully then segued to his main point, one he has been making in similarly handsome dining rooms across the country: No matter what investors thought about Obamacare politically — and surely many there did not think much of it — the law was going to make some people very rich. The Affordable Care Act, he said, wasn’t simply a law that mandated insurance for the uninsured. Instead, it would fundamentally transform the basic business model of medicine. With the right understanding of the industry, private-sector markets and bureaucratic rules, savvy investors could help underwrite innovative companies specifically designed to profit from the law. Billions could flow from Washington to Wall Street, indeed. Scully, who has spent the last 30-some years oscillating between government and the private sector, is hoping to be his own best proof of the Obamacare gold mine. As a principal health policy adviser under President George H. W. Bush, he helped formulate many of those past Republican initiatives — like the shift to private-insurance programs — that Obamacare has put into law. Under George W. Bush, he ran the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and oversaw a host of proto-Obamacare reforms, like Medicare Part D, which introduced competition into the government-supported health care market. After leaving C.M.S. in 2004, Scully began working simultaneously at Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, a leading health care private equity firm, and Alston & Bird, a law firm and health care lobbying organization. When the Affordable Care Act became law in 2010, he found himself in the rare position of being a lobbyist, private equity executive and former government health care official with access to a serious amount of capital. During the past three years, as other Republicans have tried to overturn Obamacare, Scully searched for a way to make a killing from it. […] As a Republican, he said, he was ambivalent about the Affordable Care Act. He liked the market-driven private-insurance exchanges, but he detested that the law called for hundreds of billions of dollars in future subsidies to help Americans, including certain families earning up to about $95,000, buy insurance. The rapid transfer of so much money from other parts of the economy could have a negative overall effect. “It’s way too much money, way too fast,” Scully said. “But it’s going to be great for you investors.” […] Full: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/magazine/the-president-wants-you-to-get-rich-on-obamacare.html?pagewanted=5&_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&&pagewanted=all _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
